US midterms: False and misleading claims about the vote go viral

A series of false and misleading claims have gone viral online days before the US midterm elections.

Some of the claims cast doubt on the legitimacy of the voting process in key states, while others include manipulated content from across the political spectrum.

The BBC has examined some of the most widely shared claims.

Claims that voting machines flip votes from Republicans to Democrats and vice versa have dogged US elections for years. Yet to date there is no evidence to suggest that election tampering has taken place.

A handful of posts recently began circulating on social media from voters in Texas who claimed that voting machines were switching their votes from Democrat to Republican. One tweet read: “Texas GOP up to the same dirty tricks.”

Local county officials and the secretary of state’s office all confirmed receiving a small handful of reports relating to voters experiencing difficulties with touch screen machines, and have encouraged voters to review their ballots before submitting them.

In a local interview, Sam Taylor, a spokesperson for the Texas secretary of state’s office, denied any tampering going on and instead put the instances down to user error.

Electronic Systems Software, a company which provides voting machines to multiple Texas counties, has acknowledged such controlled studies on their website, but adds that these do not reflect an actual election scenario where “multiple levels of physical and cyber security are always in place”.

The film “2,000 mules” by right-wing political commentator Dinesh D’Souza claims to reveal widespread voter fraud operating across several swing states in the 2020 election, and has been promoted by multiple Republicans.

On Facebook alone, mentions of the film have had over four million interactions.

One map in the film claims to have used geolocation data to show an individual had visited multiple voting drop boxes in a single day in Georgia. Yet analysis of the map shows that the drop box locations shown in the video do not match up with the same locations on a map.

Evidence from the independent Georgia Bureau of Investigation revealed that in the film coming within as much as 100ft of a drop box was counted as having visited one.

In limited cases, election crime and voter fraud can happen. But the allegation that it is widespread enough to swing the results of an election is baseless. In Arizona, a three-year-long investigation into voter fraud prosecuted just 20 cases in a state of 7.2 million people.

A manipulated video of former President Barack Obama campaigning for the Democrats in Detroit, Michigan, has been viewed more than two million times and widely shared.

In the manipulated clip, it appears as though Mr Obama was cut off by the audience chanting an expletive against President Joe Biden.

However, Mr Obama was in fact responding to a heckler in the audience, who shouted at him as the former president addressed violent rhetoric in US politics and last week’s attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Videos of the full rally show there were no chants against Mr Biden in the largely pro-Democrat crowd.

House of Representatives minority leader Kevin McCarthy launched Republican campaign pledges for the midterms in September under the slogan “Commitment to America”.

It included pledges to reduce gas prices and crime, among others.

But a fake version of Republican campaign pledges has been widely shared online, which has been manipulated to feature promises to cut Social Security benefits, raise the eligibility age for Medicare and tax veterans.

The Pennsylvania Senate race between Republican Mehmet Oz and Democrat John Fetterman is seen as one of the crucial battles of the midterms campaign, which could potentially decide whether the Senate remains in Democratic control or flips to the Republicans.

A number of doctored memes featuring Dr Oz have been shared in recent weeks which claim to show voters in Pennsylvania tell him to his face that they don’t intend to vote for him.

One shows a house with Dr Oz’s campaign sign upside down in the front garden, which makes one of them appear to read “no” above his name.

But the same picture of the house, located in Pittsburgh, can be found on the website of a real estate company without the upside down Oz campaign signs.

The person who created the picture told the BBC it was done as a joke and should not be taken seriously.